Military-to-civilian transition programs should shift their focus to employment and improve oversight, according to a recent report from the Rand Corp.

“Transition aids, such as training, education, career advice, and job support, can boost veterans’ job prospects and help them find or develop fulfilling careers in civilian life,” the report found. “However, as prior RAND research has shown, many veterans still feel that they are unable to leverage their military skills in their civilian jobs.”

The report analyzed 45 federally funded transition programs to reach its findings. The four largest programs are the Post-9/11 GI Bill, Veteran Readiness and Employment, DoD’s Tuition Assistance Program and the Survivors' and Dependents’ Educational Assistance program.

About 200,000 service members transition to civilian life every year, according to a Department of Veterans Affairs webpage.

“Today, we find our post-9/11 era veterans having a greater transition challenge than any other previous generation,” retired Lt. Col. Arthur DeGroat testified last fall before the Senate Veterans' Affairs and Armed Services Committees, adding that this new generation of veterans is “competing for [jobs against a] highly skilled incumbent civilian talent pool.”

The government invests over $13 billion annually in military transition programs, but “very few programs focus on military-to-civilian employment transitions,” the report found.

“More than 95 percent of total transition program dollars went to education programs, but just under 50 percent of participants enrolled in education or training programs,” according to a 2020 Government Accountability Office analysis cited in the Rand report. “Education and training programs consume a disproportionate share of funding relative to the number of participants that they serve.”

Further, investment in transition programs does not always have a direct effect on outcomes. The Transition Assistance Program, a DoD program that provides pre-separation counseling and employment counseling, did not yield higher wages for its participants, the report found.

“There is virtually no evidence that any of the programs we examined has had a direct effect on transition outcomes,” the report found. “In some cases, the evidence was counterintuitive: The … Transition Assistance Program … was associated with lower wages for those who participate in the program.”

Across the 45 programs, “oversight is weak” and “program redundancies are common,” the report found. There are 25 programs that provide educational counseling services and 21 that provide educational needs assessments, for example.

The report recommends that transition programs be streamlined and refocus on employment support. “The U.S. government should mandate increased oversight of the programs included in our study,” the report found. “Federal budgets should dedicate more funding to programs that help transitioning service members, veterans, and their families immediately enter the civilian labor market and hold such programs accountable for employment outcomes.”

Read the full report here.